Learning Game: Reports from the Field

This report has the potential to be very fucking good. I was out for 3 hours last night and I learned a lot of informative lessons. Most of them abstract. Here we go.

Trying vs. Being Outcome Independent

This shit is kryptonite. The ideal is to walk up to a girl without caring about whether you sleep with her. The ideal is to be in that headspace where you’re having fun, relaxed and really enjoying your night. The massive contrast to this is that you’re going out, giving up your time, pushing your comfort zone and consciously choosing to approach massive amounts of women. This is inherently all a form of trying and on nights like last night, it’s a-fucking-lot of trying. Last night I wanted to read a book not approach 20 women, I had to consciously get my ass out to Meatpacking and then consciously keep myself hitting it for three hours. Most night it’s difficult for me to reconcile this with achieving a carefree, happy-go-lucky mindset which frequently leads to sex. The solution? More time, more practice. The more I approach the easier it gets the more often I can slip into that great headspace. The other solution is to continually remind yourself to focus on the action and not the result. The Bhagavad Gita hammers on this point mercilessly. Do the action for the action’s sake, not for the result.

The Click Wasn’t There

I noticed how my actions were different from the nights when I crush it. I wasn’t high-fiving girls, I wasn’t approaching instantly and without thinking. However, I think that even when I’m feeling off I can basically force myself to do all those things and hopefully jump start the motor.

The Wingman Dynamic

I’m going to generalize but I’ve found the following to generally be true: going into the night you usually have to choose between your wingman and a girl. When you choose your wingman you’ll often leave sets that you would prefer to stay in, or you’ll talk to girls you might otherwise ignore.

On the other hand, when you’re in it for the women you typically lose your wingman early. You’ll open a set and like your girl, he doesn’t like the friend so he bounces. Ten minutes later he’s at a different venue, you’re in a different set trying to pull, you’ve both chosen to focus on the girl. In my experience, it’s usually the nights when I choose the women over the wingman when I get laid. The issue is that in an ideal world you and you’re wingman will open a two set, each will like the girl, each girl will like him, flowers will drop from the sky and Jocko Willink will offer to teach you about manliness. Unfortunately, it rarely works out like that.

I’ve noticed that 80% of the time when I go out with my best wingman, who has a perpetually awesome state and pulls multiple times a week, we’re lucky if we spend 15 minutes together. If we happen to stay at the same venue then we’ll meet again but likely as not we won’t. That’s placing the focus on the girl and it’s the most effective way to get laid. It’s also why if you’re going out with a non-game buddy you basically can’t do game effectively, because at a certain point you’ll need to choose the girl over him.

Failing to Take Action

Last night I was out there swimming in circles. My goal when I go out is to pull, everything else is an extension of making that happen. So now I have solid logistics and a bunch of cool excuses to bring a girl home. In set that needs to manifest as me testing for logistics and then seeding the pull. It’s important that I remember that I don’t have to be making out with the girl to pull her. I think this is an extremely common problem for me, I look for way to many signs before I go for the pull.

Forcing the Positive Reframe

Last night was interesting in that I felt like it was bad and yet the same night, a year ago, would have been awesome. I would have been fucking thrilled in fact. I used that to force myself to reframe it as a positive and to focus on all the things I did right. I didn’t leave when I felt like quitting, got back into it. I talked to the cute girls, I did the “tough” sets. I went out for 3 fucking hours when I didn’t want to go out for three minutes. These are all good, I do my damn best to keep them in mind.

The Anti-Social Social Club

Apart from pickup I lead an odd, essentially social isolated lifestyle. I live in Airbnbs. When I came to NYC last summer I found it difficult to find a room so I decided to tide myself over with an Airbnb and never stopped. I have literally one friend who is not also into pickup. I work in person with my boss and one other coworker about 18 hours a week and these “work sessions” are essentially the only social interactions I have outside of pickup.

It’s easy to criticize my lifestyle and I’m often the first to do it. I’ve essentially sharpened my life into something which revolves solely around doing pickup at night. This is often glorified on the forums, it sounds fucking cool right? In one respect it definitely is. Even if I quit tonight I would for the rest of my life be a more disciplined, socially savvy, confident person who gets laid more. But on the other hand it’s also a little extreme. While I get a massive-fucking-overabundance of introductory interactions with people (aka girls), my lasting relationships are virtually nonexistent. I don’t know that there’s one wingman who I went out with last August who I still go out with even once a month now.

However, when I look at the average person’s life with car payments, insurance, a mortgage, a less than stellar girl, a less than amazing job, a dog, I don’t want anything to do with that either. Even the young guys I see in NYC, working finance with their $100,000 a year and sick apartments and bottles, that’s not really me either. What I really need to do is optimize my own unique way of living. I should find some cool guys to live with, join a social activity that isn’t pickup related and find one or two cool friends who aren’t into pickup and hang with them. Will I do it? Who the fuck knows, I plan on moving to the tropics for the whole winter. But the next time I’m ready to settle in a place I will definitely take the time to create a healthier environment than the one in which I live now.

Having Gone off the Philosophy Deep End, to the Night

Had a good possibility to pull a birthday girl but I didn’t end up doing it. I just wasn’t fucking motivated, she wasn’t cute enough. When I thought about sex with her and not getting any sleep, I thought sleep sounded way more tempting. I let that set whither and die. However, one lesson to take is that I kept trying to make out with her but she wasn’t having it. What I need to realize is that there’s a good chance plenty of girls will be down for “wine and an awesome NYC view at my place” but will not be cool with making out with a stranger in front of her friends. Her willingness to makeout and her willingness to leave with me are not necessarily correlated, I have to remember this.

Early in the night we opened a set and my girl stayed on her phone and ignored me. I made a half-assed attempt to tell her to get off the phone but it sounded pathetic. Next time I will speak louder and with more authority. What I really wanted to do was just leave her but I was in wingman mode, not girl mode.

I opened two girls and they were into me. They were putting their hands around my neck and I thought it was going to be a double makeout, then I made a joke about roofies in one of their drinks. Not even like I was joking that I did it, it was just an offhand comment about drinks lying around. They immediately looked at me weird and left. Never use the word roofies. Nothing to be gained, plenty to be lost.

Arguably the most influential set of the night was a 30 year old woman who looked German. It was the lowest point of the night, about two hours deep. I felt like as much fun as a month old tuna-fish sandwich. However, I did my best open on her and she was very receptive and happy to talk to me. Ten minutes of this brought me back and the next hour was good. Lesson being, keep going. One set has the potential to turn around your entire night.

About Me

I’m 25 and going out quite a bit. When I started I was scared to approach, but things are better now. I’ve had sex in bathrooms, had girls tell me to kill myself, and everything in between. Find out more here.